5 Steps to Motivating a Team

Thursday, August 6th, 2009 Comments 0
  Posted in Featured, Team Building

Once your team is in place and you’ve established the building blocks to build your team into something great, you’re faced with the dilemma of keeping them together and motivated.  Motivation is a big deal with long term teams, whether they’re all in the same office or flung across the country or the world.

Traditional management methods for long term motivation can be boiled down to two things: chain them to their seats and be liberal with the whip.

Obviously, this doesn’t work in today’s environment and isn’t healthy-and probably wasn’t healthy then either.  What your team really needs for that motivation that keeps them fired up now, tomorrow, next week, and even next year is true motivational learning.

Simple things like short-term goal setting (and achieving), having non-work-related meetings to allow team members to chat and talk, and giving little pieces of praise and simple rewards for a job well done can do wonders.  In fact, all of these actions can be phrased simply: show appreciation for your team as individual people.

Here are some simple ideas to help you motivate your team for the short and long haul, starting now:

1.      Set simple goals for your project for the team to achieve individually and together. Kindergarten goals are counterproductive for this, but setting realistic goals or maybe bumping a time line a couple of days to give the team something to grab for can do wonders.  Make sure rewards for those goals are clearly spelled out, to incentivize the extra effort.

2.      Reward team members and the whole team at intervals.  Simple rewards like gift certificates for two to a restaurant, catered lunch, cash bonuses, or even just a card to say “you’re doing great!” are all good motivators.  They show appreciation and aren’t too expensive.

3.      Just a note to a team member saying “good job” is often enough to boost them a little.  On an off day, when they aren’t feeling so great about the project, remembering one of those notes can be what makes them perk up.

4.      Give them some time off as a surprise.  When the team makes a goal and accomplishes something early, maybe finishing a task on Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning, why not give them Friday off as a thank you?  Or send them home early on a Friday afternoon, even. Those little things, as a surprise, can really make the team feel appreciated.

5.      Let them be people.  Instead of structuring everything, sticking directly to the meeting agenda, and getting in and out of a team conference as quickly as possible, why not allow a little extra slack time?  Let the team gather a little early to pour themselves coffee and chat.  Or let them linger after the meeting for a few minutes and talk and have a laugh.  These build team spirit and camaraderie and are as good or better than those getaway seminars the “gurus” hold.

All of these are great motivators and can be used over time to really ad up to some great team motivation and friendship.  A great team is a team that likes one another and an awesome team is one that likes to work together and is highly motivated to get the job done.

Building that kind of team is a lot of dedicated work, but it’s always well worth it and pays off big later.

Related posts:

1. Team Building For the Long Term
2. 7 Tips for Successful Project Collaboration
3. How To Stay Motivated and On Track